Featured Review: yield

yield Curator Dana Turkovic sees the craft of weaving as an extended metaphor for formalist abstraction in this group show of paintings and painting-related work. In the thin gray lines of Hadi Tabatabai's Thread Paintings, Erik Spehn's large canvases of pale-hued and threaded canvas strips and Jim Isermann's tapestry of hand-loomed cotton, meticulous grids of interwoven materials form the imagery to be considered. The spare exhibit seems to ask that you literally yield to the work at hand and engage in a level of rigorous consideration that's commensurate with the procedural rigor it displays. A long braid of pastel-dyed rope hangs at the main space's far end, punctuating the grid-dominated pieces, while a video and sound piece, depicting the stop-animated foibles of black fabric strands, echoes in an adjoining gallery. These two explicitly crafty and playful pieces make a daring proposal for the otherwise rigidly austere show: that it's ultimately a human product, full of sentiment, trial and ritual error. Through May 9 at Schmidt Contemporary Art, 615 North Grand Boulevard; www.schmidtcontemporaryart.com or 314-575-2648. Hours: noon-5 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat.